Post-qualitative Research Research Articles

Psychology, the posts, and qualitative research

ABSTRACT In this article, we consider the debates in the field of psychology about the “posts” around two broad issues—that of “incommensurability” between qualitative research and post-qualitative inquiry, and tensions regarding method and methodology. We are largely in agreement that these systems of thought are so fundamentally different that they cannot be reconciled, as they arise from differing ontological and epistemological foundations of qualitative and post-qualitative inquiry, but we offer some clarifications regarding our views. In relation to methods and methodology, we provide some examples of different conceptions of methods and methodology, primarily by examining writers who are sympathetic to critical posthumanism. While in some cases, methods and methodology are eschewed, in other cases, methods but not methodology are eschewed, while yet in others, a focus on the research process is what produces the knowledge. The paper concludes by considering the contributions that psychology has offered posthumanism.

Women’s non-linear journeys into and through higher education are considered through an emergent research process that spans qualitative and post-qualitative practice

ABSTRACT Founded on and sustained through patriarchal thought and value systems, higher education remains a highly gendered and en/gendering institution. This reflects and simultaneously constitutes epistemological injustice, and creates a viscous cycle or de/privilege. Moreover, regionality de-centres and further marginalizes women academics, and those belonging to other equity groups experience compounding inequities. To understand the experiences of ‘becoming’ women academics within regional universities, we engaged a qualitative collaborative autoethnography and the post-qualitative practice of re-considering and re-inscribing ethnographic ‘data’ that glowed in us. These glowful data illuminated our ‘non-linear’ and non-teleological careering away from, around, and into academia, highlighting synergies between our ‘non-traditional’ academic pathways and (un)structured, in-the-making epistemological practice. In this paper, we share our ‘glowful’ process and consider the possibilities (and tensions) of engaging in research that occupies a space bordering qualitative and post-qualitative inquiry, designed to resist Cartesian and Positivist epistemologies and methodological practices.

Cartographic Review of Teacher Educators’ Professional Learning with an Aesthetic Approach

Experimenting with innovative and creative ways to conduct a literature review aligns with the paradigm shift from qualitative to post-qualitative research, which is concerned with doing and becoming rather than being. The aim of this article is twofold: to unfold the process of a cartographic approach to conducting a literature review; and by exploring the literature to discuss what an aesthetic approach activates in teacher educators’ collaborative professional learning activities. Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari (1988)’s cartographic principle of the rhizome, and post-qualitative inquiry more generally, this review generates knowledge through connections of concepts across 21 international research projects from teacher educators that use an aesthetic approach in their collaborative practices. New components of professional learning are found by mapping-and-tracing entangled concepts. A discussion of encounters within an aesthetic approach to professional learning shows how the processes involved in a cartographic review generates new directions in thinking, such as becoming-professional.

Friendships Without Friendships: Traversing the Contours of Relationality Through Reading/Writing

This article engages with the intersections of reading, writing, and friendship (between the two authors). Specifically, we (re)trace conversations, presentations, notes, and text messages that have emerged since we (e.g., authors) have become thinking-friends and how we think about reading and its irrevocable relationship to writing. Using a range of books and a suite of theories associated with post-qualitative research, this article tempts readers/writers to consider—and perhaps (re)frame—reading/writing in three distinct ways: reading/writing as haunted, reading/writing as invitation, and reading/writing as provocation. Ultimately, we view this nomadic w(a/o)ndering about each register (e.g., reading, writing, and friendship) as being always-already emergent and not limited to strict temporal demarcations.

UnboXing relationships and sexuality education with a phEmaterialist arts-activist praxis

ABSTRACT Inspired by posthuman, feminist materialist theory-doings in educational research, this paper maps moments in a post-qualitative research project that set out to explore what else relationships and sexuality education might become with ‘art-as-way’ (Manning 2020) in a shaky yet conducive policy context where ‘what matters’ must not be assumed in advance but co-constructed with children and young people. Progressively supported by an artist-in-residence teacher assistant, composer and filmmaker, we open up what unfolds when a diverse group of 11 young people (age 13–14) creatively unbox and make ‘what matters’ to them in an art classroom. We conceptualize what came to matter as ‘dartaphacts’ (arts-activist objects) and follow these other-worldly posthuman pARTicipants as they connect, grow, and become ‘more-than’. We speculate, that in conducive, con-sense-ual environments, the affective power of dartaphacts can unbox a living curriculum for a Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) to come, in all its Majestic Insecurity, Untitled, Freedoms, Feathers, Bruised Hearts, Consent-quakes, eQuality Vibrations and Wiggly Woos.

Transformative Learning in the Era of Post-Reflexivity

This article collects over 20 years of studies, encounters, and conversations around Transformative Theory and reflective practices, which have characterized my identity as a scholar and the Italian Transformative Learning Network’s identity. I am going to trace the main challenges that, starting from practice-based studies and situated learning theory, have established the foundation for our research group's discussion on Transformative Learning. I am going to venture into open dialectical arenas with new perspectives that have amazed and questioned me. The posthuman, sociomateriality, and post-qualitative inquiry interrogate some of the foundations of Transformative Theory and urge us to create a creative space to share challenging epistemic constructions.

Breaking bad? Playing the fool and constructing the ‘bad researcher’ in entrepreneurship

How to deal with grand challenges and the crisis of knowledge production and their implications for entrepreneurial research and practice is a topic of growing interest. In this paper we argue that we need to rethink who is involved in entrepreneurship research and how that research is conducted and communicated. This begins by moving beyond the traditional ostensible objective separation of the ‘researcher’ from the ‘research subject’ to adopt a posthuman and post-qualitative inquiry perspective that questions the dominant position of the human subject and challenges the humanistic belief in the essential, conscious and intentional human as the primary source of agency. As such, it adopts a process ontology, stresses hybridity and difference and encourages experimentation. This requires us to become ‘bad researchers’, undertaking subversive research that goes beyond the oppositions of quantitative/qualitative and foundationalist/non-foundationalist. In this we take the ‘fool’ (jester, trickster) as our guide. Historically associated with inversion, usurping authority and putting down the mighty the fool is a liminal character who has the duty to ask all those questions that no one else dares to ask. The paper concludes with suggestions as to how this may inform a re-newed entrepreneurship for the crisis-laden twenty first century.

유아교육현장에서 어린이~물질을 둘러싼 순간(mo[ve]ment) 바라보기

The purpose of this study is to find posthumanism as a paradigm that leads the ontological transition, new materialism as a new thinking about material, and Deleuze's sensory theory and ontology, and to focus on the children~material mo[ve]ment centering on it. This study is a post-qualitative inquiry that respects ethical encounters and constant generation, and was conducted through “becoming together” and “pedagogical documentation”. For this purpose, data was collected from 18 children aged 5 and a half from a public kindergarten located in Y-si, Gyeongsangnam-do. Afterwards, in the data arrangement, the researcher's photos, pedagogical documentation, and research participants' photos and conversations were created and intertwined. The results of this study showed that all mo[ve]ment surrounding children and materials do not result in representation. The experience that emerges from the encounter with children~ material is not segmented into any one area, and is created through the child's life and the power of the senses. This was in line with Deleuze's view that the continuous becoming-of-sensation and the movement in which its power is expressed are artistic moments, and it was examined that these are moments when vibrant substances change and influence each other's bodies. Through this study, it is hoped that, we will be able to listen to the encounter with children~materials in early childhood education settings, and that ethical practices and discussions will continue to operate in a vital manner.

‘웅덩이’와 소나무 어린이집 영유아들의 얽힌 놀이되기

Objectives This study examines the play experiences of young children in puddles through the perspectives of Deleuze's philosophy of rhizome and Barad's notion of agency. By analyzing the value inherent in play and how various aspects of play manifest, it aims to provide insights for alternative approaches to early childhood play. Methods From June to August 2023, a two-month participant observation was conducted on 46 children aged 1 to 5 at Pine Tree Nursery located in G City. Additionally, a post-qualitative research method was employed to capture ‘glow’ moments (MacLure, 2013) by encountering the experiences revealed in children's play through photographs, videos, and traces of play records. The collected data underwent a recursive process of reinterpreting the emerged events, connecting them with the flow of meaning, and analyzing the implications of the entanglement between the children and the puddles. Results The entangled play patterns between puddles and young children revealed several outcomes: encountering the inherent signs within the puddles, entangling with the materiality of the puddles and their environment, generating rhizomatic puddles that connect age and space, and creating ‘and... and... puddles’ by transcending time and space. Conclusions Through play in the spontaneously formed puddles, young children sensually encounter materiality and form new relationships. The dynamic and variable nature of the puddles leads to novel intra-actions with the children, resulting in creative play. Furthermore, the entanglement between the puddles and the children traverses time and space horizontally and vertically, fostering ongoing encounters. This highlights the agency embedded in the entangled relationship between young children and materials, suggesting the importance for early childhood educators to provide support for play.

Journeying into postqualitative inquiry: an exploration of the opportunities and tensions for graduate students in sport and exercise psychology

ABSTRACT Postqualitative inquiry (PQI) has emerged in recent years as a potential-filled approach to inquiry for researchers seeking to move beyond humanist paradigms such as postpositivism and interpretivism. PQI offers researchers exciting opportunities to shift from method-focused scholarship to theory-focused scholarship, amongst other moves. As a graduate student conducting research in sport and exercise psychology (SEP), PQI caught my (i.e., first author) attention and drew me into the dynamic whirlwind of immanence, materiality, and relationality. In the present commentary paper, the purpose is to explore the opportunities and tensions of PQI for SEP graduate students. Specifically, I do so by sharing my experiences engaging with PQI in attempts to help other SEP graduate students navigate their PQI journeys. The paper first situates what PQI is/is not and what it does, followed by some of the opportunities related to engaging in PQI, which include stimulating intellectual openness, working towards social justice, and addressing methodological critiques. Despite these opportunities, some tensions do exist, such as the labours of reading hard, onto-epistemological juggling, and the rush to application. In grappling with these opportunities and tensions, recommendations are offered to SEP graduate students who do decide to journey into PQI. These recommendations consist of reframing the return on investment as rhizomatic, remaining aware of the exclusionary effects of labelling PQI, and understanding the ramifications of a decentred human in SEP research. Concluding thoughts are offered in the form of reflections from both the first and second authors.

Experience without essentialism: on ‘posting’ phenomenology

ABSTRACT In contemporary qualitative research, phenomenology is often dismissed by postqualitative inquiry (PQI) for clinging to a view of reality as fixed, self-evident, and containing inherent essences. The purpose of this article is to ask how committed phenomenologists might respond to these charges. Employing a somewhat paradoxical defense strategy, the article jumps to phenomenology’s defense by conceding most of PQI’s criticism, but arguing that these deficiencies are contingent theoretical assumptions that can (and should) be developed through dialogue with poststructuralist traditions like PQI. The article then delves into the process of ‘posting’ phenomenology. More specifically, it introduces postphenomenology, a contemporary approach that seeks to reconcile phenomenological insights with poststructuralist concerns and is explicitly anchored in an antiessentialist, relational ontology. Finally, the article argues that the inclusion of postphenomenological insights in PQI would enable a deeper comprehension of the intricate dynamics between humans, technologies, and the worlds that they inhabit.

Failing ethnographies as post-qualitative possibilities: reflections from critical posthumanities and critical disability studies

ABSTRACT Recent moves from qualitative to post-qualitative inquiry can be traced back to various developments and methodological quandaries. Posthuman philosophy and methodology is one origin story of the move to post-qualitative inquiry. This broad approach contests the humanist impulse at the heart of qualitative inquiry and demands imaginative forms of post-qualitative inquiry, theory and research that engage with the more-than-human realities and nuances of everyday life. What might it mean to hold post-qualitative sympathies and tackle a foundational methodology of qualitative inquiry (ethnography) from a quintessentially posthuman position (disability)? With reference to an ongoing ESRC funded project – Humanising Healthcare – we provide two writings about the possibilities and challenges of failing ethnography. Through reference to critical posthumanities and critical disability studies theory, we attend to broken, patchwork, kintsugi and crip ethnographies that, we argue, allow us to sit in the liminal space between qualitative/post-qualitative research and human/posthuman theory.

“Something comes through or it doesn’t”: intensive reading in post-qualitative inquiry

The article describes practices of “intensive reading” for post-qualitative inquiry, drawing on the work of Deleuze, with some examples from the author’s own research. To read intensively is to experience the forward propulsion toward something not-yet-present. That forward momentum, and the fragmented path that it carves through the library, has the potential, in the words of Stengers, to summon something “that has no stable illustration in this world.”

A primer for post qualitative inquiry

ABSTRACT Because post qualitative inquiry begins with the immanent ontology and concepts of poststructuralism, it cannot be another humanist empirical social science research methodology. This article includes discussions of the origin and ontology of post qualitative inquiry as well as its refusal of the human sciences’ man and his methods. Post qualitative inquiry may be useful for psychology to come and a people who do not yet exist.

Knowledge-ing as a response-able practice in the Anthropocene: Re-turning (to) the research events like an earthworm

This paper began with the assumption that the habitual practices of knowledge-creation, which have shaped the day-to-day contexts of teachers and researchers, are not greatly different from the practices that have led to human-made catastrophes in the Anthropocene. I pondered over my experiences as a researcher in an attempt to gain insights for thinking about and engaging in knowledge-creation differently to become more response-able in the Anthropocene. Inspired by post-qualitative research practice, I re-turned, like an earthworm, (to) two research events. A theoretical framework informed by critical posthumanism and feminist new materialism guided the process. Through these re-turns, I came to understand that creating knowledge is a complex and indeterminate process that always accompanies the ‘more-than’. Attending to the notion of knowledge-ing, I discussed the ways in which knowledge emerged as a flow that was neither fully graspable nor static through more-than-human intra-actions. What I propose in this paper is not a methodological technique, but rather, a mode of practice that might disrupt our sense of Cartesian self. I offered some suggestions for teachers and researchers to reimagine the practices of knowledge-creation as a way of reinventing their subjectivity and responding to the damaged earth more responsibly.

Critical posthumanisms, postqualitative inquiry, and conventional qualitative research: some interrogations and contemplations on their entangled identities and futurities

ABSTRACT Work conducted in the critical posthumanisms and postqualitative inquiry (i.e., the posts) has expanded in many fields, including psychology. Despite claims that the posts can help inquirers venture beyond the purported limits of conventional qualitative research (i.e., the conventional), the posts are not absolved of questioning. The present paper experiments with cascade questioning to interrogate what is with the intent to instigate what could be by contemplating the entangled identity politics of the conventional/posts. The paper begins with an introductory anecdote, followed by conjectures on identity and politics. Six interrogations/contemplations are then offered. The first five interrogations/contemplations present key criticisms that have been attributed to the conventional and the posts. The paper subsequently adopts a more conciliatory tone, with the sixth interrogation/contemplation (i.e., envisioning entangled futurities for methodology) positioning the conventional/posts not as antagonists but as always already entangled in their coarticulated becomings. Implications for the human subject and for psychology are offered, followed by concluding thoughts. Ultimately, if the posts are to fulfil their political promise, they must remain nimble and open for debate by constantly challenging the identities they erect and the futurities they create relative to the conventional.

Reading for post qualitative inquiry

This paper advocates reading philosophy and using its concepts in educational and social science research. The lengthy engagement with the various concepts and conceptual orders of poststructuralism required for post qualitative inquiry exceeds the scope of reading required for a conventional literature review at the beginning of a typical empirical research project. Reading that spans many years of an academic career does not serve the epistemological project of stabilizing what is known through recognition, representation, and summary but attends to an ontological project of re-orienting thought through experimentation, invention, and creation to enable what does not yet exist but might.

The critical posthumanities and postqualitative inquiry in psychology

ABSTRACT This article inaugurates a special issue on the critical posthumanities and postqualitative inquiry. Within psychology, more of us agree we dislike these ‘post’ approaches than can agree what they are about. The purpose of this article is not to make the ‘posts’ more likable for psychologists. Instead, we make a case for refining the contempt towards ‘post inquiry’ and raising the level of our connoisseurship in order to pass judgement on it in a fair and ethical manner. Our arguments are followed by some thoughts about the process and product of the special issue, which aims to support connoisseurship and answers essential questions about the critical posthumanities and postqualitative inquiry, while originating new ones. We hope this work contributes to expand the horizons of qualitative psychology.

Imagining education beyond growth: A post-qualitative inquiry into the educational consequences of post-growth economic thought

AbstractThis paper explores the possible consequences for education of a transition to a post-growth society. Utilising a post-qualitative approach to inquiry, this study begins by analysing post-growth economic literature. It then connects this literature to existing educational scholarship to explore the consequences for education of a transition to a post-growth society. The analysis reveals key features and arrangements proposed in the literature for a post-growth society. It discusses the ways in which education can prepare young people for a future beyond economic growth and speculates as to how education can contribute towards the realisation of this type of society. The paper concludes that education can help prepare students for a post-growth future by focusing on the development of ecological literacy, embracing a place-based approach to education, helping students to comprehend the need for social and economic change, introducing them to a plurality of ideas about how the future might look, developing their capacity to think critically about their future, enhancing their sense of personal autonomy and capacity for self-determination, and supporting their capacity to form strong social relationships.

Togethering Situation in Diffractive Inquiry

Making knowledge includes creating the practices of knowing. Setting up our apparatus, we create diffractive encounters between the oscillating fields of Mary Parker Follett’s pragmatist theorizing about evolving situations; Barad’s account of diffraction; and our two scholars’ bodies, separately engaged in researching organizational socialization and family business. This article illustrates our collaborative writing to experiment with diffracting situations in empirical studying. From Follett’s concept, we offer the creative integration of gesammting (togethering) situations in diffraction. This article illustrates the uneasy boundary-performance in postqualitative inquiry and arrives at integratively selving as a practice of emerging generative futures.